Former First Lady Hillary Clinton isn't ashamed of the massive amount of money she and husband Bill Clinton have earned over the last decade through high-paying speaking gigs.

Hitting the speaking circuit was a necessity in order to maintain their lifestyle after Bill's term as the 42nd President of the United States ended, Clinton told ABC's Diane Sawyer in a sit-down interview ahead of the release of her book Hard Choices.

'We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt,' Clinton said. 'We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education.'

'You know, it was not easy.'

The couple has earned millions since moving out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue through plum speaking gigs that are said to run hosts $200,000 a pop and advance payment on their books of $8 million or more

Hillary Clinton, right, talks with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, left, for her first television interview in conjunction with the release of her new book, Hard Choices, airing during a one-hour ABC News prime time special on Monday, June 9 beginning at 9 pm EST. The interview took place in Clinton's Washington, D.C. home

The couple has earned millions since
moving out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue through plum speaking engagements that
are said to run hosts $200,000 a pop and advance payments on their books
of $8 million or more.

CNN reported a year ago that Bill Clinton had earned a sweet $106 million in speaker's fees since leaving the White House, and that he made $17 million off of 72 speeches in 2012 alone - a personal best.

The news station combed through the Clintons' financial disclosure forms and found that Bill Clinton once charged $750,000 for a single speech.

'Bill has worked really hard -- and it's been amazing to me -- he's worked very hard,' Hillary told Sawyer during a segment of their interview that aired this morning.

'First of all, we had to pay off all our debts, which was, you know, he had to make double the money because of obviously taxes and then pay off the debts and get us houses and take care of family members,' she said.

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Lap of Luxury: Chelsea Clinton and her husband Marc Mezvinsky bought a $10.5 million apartment overlooking Madison Square Park last year

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Beauty: The four-bedroom condo features high ceilings and
elegantly decorated rooms. Built in the new-Georgian style in 1924, the
property has been completely renovated

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Comfort: The building has been fitted with a top-of-the-range kitchen complete with the latest high quality appliances

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Space: There is plenty of room for the couple's
toothbrushes in the apartment's huge bathroom, which is fitted out in
Italian marble

A comprehensive analysis of Hillary's speeches conducted by Mother Jones puts the former secretary of state's haul to more than $5 million since last year.

A sizable portion of that money has come from the same financial institutions and 1 percent of society that many progressives claim to loathe.

Rather than take money from any one organization or lobbyist group, Hillary Clinton has welcomed them all.

'Let me put it this way,' she told Sawyer. 'I thought making
speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with
any one group or company as so many people who leave public life do.'

'I happen to have given lots of free speeches,' Clinton said.

Hillary does not take payment for speeches she gives on behalf of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family's non-governmental organization.

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Home for the summer: Bill and Hillary Clinton rented out this sprawling mansion in the Hamptons for approximately $200,000 a day last summer

The Clintons have also made anywhere from $31 - $37 million off of their books since 2003 in advance payments.

Knopf
Publishing Group paid Bill Clinton $15 million for his 2004
autobiography My Life. Simon & Schuster gave Hillary Clinton an $8
million advance for her 2003 book Living History. Her advance for Hard
Choices, which comes out tomorrow, is not known, but guesstimates put
the payout between $8 and $14 million.

A 2013 USA Today analysis put Bill Clinton's net worth at $55 million. More recent estimates put he and Hillary's combined net worth at $100
to $200 million. The amount of money the couple has made since
the beginning of last year is a mystery, though.

As a public office holder and
an administration official Hillary Clinton was required to file
financial disclosure statements each year. Now that neither Clinton is
officially working in politics, that information is private.

The former first couple and their only child, Chelsea, don't seem to be doing too shabby for themselves, though.

Chelsea and her husband Marc Mezvinsky bought a 5,000 sq ft apartment in Manhattan last spring for $10.5 million.

The four-bedroom,six and a half bath luxury apartment is located next to Madison Square Park in the trendy Flatiron District.

Bill
and Hillary Clinton are known to own two homes - one in Washington,
D.C., where Clinton did her interview with Sawyer, and another in
Chappaqua, New York - in addition to an apartment in Manhattan.

The colonial style Chappaqua, New York, home has five bedrooms and takes up 5,200 sq ft.

Their three story, 5,152 sq ft home in Washington, D.C. has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, two half bathrooms and a basement.The average home in their neighborhood is valued at $6,586,000, according to real estate website Trulia.

The Clintons have spent their past three summers at homes they rented out in the Hamptons.

Bill and Hillary reportedly paid $200,000 a day to rent out the six bedroom Sagaponak mansion of former senior managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co and Republican donor Michael Saperstein last summer. The property is valued at $11 million.

The former president and his wife have also made enough money over the years that they were able to donate $13.2 million to Hillary's failed presidential bid in 2008.

The couple had intended the money to be a loan, but they were never able to make back the initial amount or the $77,900 of interest that had
accumulated on it.

Bill and Hillary Clinton's Chappaqua, New York house, taken in June 2008 when Hillary was running for president

Hillary Clinton sat down with Diane Sawyer as part of the rollout of her memoir Hard Choices.

Hard Choices will not be officially released until tomorrow, but a number of news outlets have already gotten their hands on the book in whole or in part, including a chapter on the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

In the 34-pages dedicated to discussing the assault, Clinton explains the administration's now debunked belief that a crude, anti-Muslim YouTube was the cause of the disruption that ended in the death of four Americans that day.

She also ridicules her critics and those of then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice as engaging in a 'political
slugfest on the backs of dead Americans.'

'Those who insist on politicizing the
tragedy will have to do so without me,' Clinton wrote.

The former State Department official told Sawyers during their chat that she does not yet know if she will be testifying before the House of Representatives committee tasked with investigating the attack.

'That's going to be up to the people running the hearing,' Clinton said. 'We'll see what they decide to do, how they conduct themselves, whether
or not this is, you know, one more travesty about the loss of four
Americans, or whether this is, in the best tradition of the Congress, an
effort to figure out how – what we can do better.'

Asked by Sawyer if there was anything she could have 'personally' done to prevent the deaths of the American citizens in Libya, Clinton said the gave 'very direct instructions' to 'the people who have the expertise and experience in security.'

'That is personal.'

'I'm not equipped to sit and look at blueprints, to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be,' she said. 'That's why we hire people who have that expertise.'

Bill and Hillary Clinton also own a three story, 5,152 sq ft home in Washington, D.C. that has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, two half bathrooms and a basement. The average home in their neighborhood is valued at $6,586,000, according to real estate website Trulia

Clinton has events scheduled in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., among others, to promote the book, as well as interviews on every major network.

The full, hour-long pre-taped interview with Sawyer will air tonight on ABC at 9 pm EST. Clinton will also join ABC's Robin Roberts on Good Morning America tomorrow for a live interview.

In another clip of Hillary's interview with Sawyer that has already aired, the potential 2016 presidential candidate said that after her book tour she would campaign for Democratic candidates competing in 'the midterm elections in the fall and then take a deep breath and kind of go through my pluses and minuses' and decide if she wants to make an second attempt at the presidency.

Clinton said she had no definite timetable for the decision and that she would do it 'when it feels right for me to decide.'

In the meantime, the Democratic Party's other 2016 hopefuls should 'do whatever they choose to do,' she said.

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Hillary Clinton defends her $200,000 speaking fees to pay for their houses and Chelsea's education